Physical Wellness

Drinking Coffee And Tea Regularly Adds Calories To Your Diet

By Anne Collins | Update Date: Feb 01, 2017 11:16 AM EST

A new study has analyzed how drinking coffee and tea may add extra calories to a person's diet. Add-ins in coffee and tea are empty when it comes to nutritional value but loaded in calories according to researchers. Sugar accounts for 60 percent of the calories and the rest is fat.

The study was published in the journal Science Direct. The team found that coffee or tea flavorings, sugar, cream, milk and other additions can mean 69 extra calories a day. Even if one adds milk or cream the amount of calcium is about 22mm average is negligible given the daily recommended calcium itake of 1000 to 1300 mg/day.

Emax Health reported, the University of Illinois Kinesiology and Community health professor Ruopeng An said "Many people prefer drinking coffee and tea with sugar, cream, half-and-half or honey. These add-in items are often dense in energy and fat but low in nutritional value.

Tea drinkers tend to add fewer calorie-dense substances. But add-ins such as milk and sugar can add 43 calories into daily intake. Professor An said that 85 percent of the added calories come from sugar.

The team looked into 12 years of data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The data included 13,185 adults who drank coffee and 6,215 adults who drank tea within a day. The study found that more than half of these adults added extra calories from sugar.

The sweeteners and flavorings if used daily can add up to extra pounds. The add-in items are dense in energy and fat and were found to have low nutritional value.

According to The Sun special coffee contains more calories than a Tesco chicken and bacon mayonnaise sandwich and may have more sugar than mars bars. Costa's Mint Hot Chocolate, contained 452 calories. Starbucks' new Hot Fudge Chocolate was a healthier option but still contained 302 calories.

The suggest that 51 percent of American adults drink coffee and 26 percent drink tea on any given day - that's more than 160 million. It aims to remind us about the added extra's in our hot drinks.

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